Often while I’m stepping through server side code, I’ll get the error message “Unable to step. The operation could not be completed. A retry should be performed.”

Or the “Unable to step. The message filter indicated that the application is busy.” message.

Once you’ve gotten either of these messages, neither F10 or F11 will work, you just keep getting the same message.

Finding information on this problem has been elusive, but I finally found this blog post which confirms the problem I’ve always suspected, that it’s a race condition in the VS debugger which is triggered by pressing either F10 or F5 at the same time as a javascript event is triggered in IE.

The blog post outlines 3 workarounds, none of which I care for, so I thought I’d share a little trick I’ve discovered which will usually allow you to get back on track and start debugging again.

Here’s how I get the debugger back on track:

Place a break point on the next line of code

Press F5

When the break point is hit, F10 & F11 will work again

Warning: There have been a few times when the debugger did not stop on my breakpoint, but for the most part, it stopped 99% of the time. I may have missed a distinction in those few cases.

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About Me

Senior Software Consultant working in the Toronto area. I specialize in Microsoft technologies and have a long history of taking software development projects from idea, through development and implementation, and years of maintenance.
Always looking for interesting projects.